


An Idiotic Decision

by FortuneSurfer



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, F/M, Gen, M/M, late to the party
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-12-07 00:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18227690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortuneSurfer/pseuds/FortuneSurfer
Summary: Amidst all of this, Raylan wonders what has happened, full of absurd conviction that he’s somehow just shot himself.





	An Idiotic Decision

**Author's Note:**

> Soulmate-AU in which you don't find your soulmate but choose them.
> 
> I love feedback and talking to fellow fans, so, I would love to hear if you like or dislike the story I am sharing with you

Boyd reaches for the gun.

Raylan feels it prior to actually seeing the ideal equilibrium of the three powers in the room being upset, and he does what he’s learned to always do: he draws, and he pulls the trigger of his Colt.

It’s a seventeen years old instinct, his second nature.

Next, the dining room of ex-mrs Crowder is brightly illuminated, as if there were a lightening trapped inside of it. Raylan hears a shot, and another one, a fraction of a second later. He hears the sound of a body falling down and parts with his own balance, when the blast and the pain that slashes his chest knock the wind out of him.

The kick is five, ten times harder than a neat punch in the stomach, the kind of a kick a horse breaks your ribs with, like smashed potato chips. Raylan lands on the floor, hitting his head against the parquet. The pain in his chest turns into numbness disturbingly fast, and on some primitive level of his bodily perception, Raylan knows that it’s a worse sign, that he’s got it bad.

Amidst all of this, he wonders what has happened, full of absurd conviction that he’s somehow just shot himself. Then, he thinks that Boyd must have been faster. That he shouldn’t have returned to Harlan. Also, that he won’t ever see Winona again, or Helen. That he won’t spit in Arlo’s face or try an ice-cream cone in that café on the corner in Summersville... And he makes himself do the impossible thing.

He inhales.

Raylan feels for the wound to apply pressure on it.

At the same time when his fingers find dry, intact fabric in the place where he feels must be a hole in his chest, Raylan realizes that he mistook Boyd’s labored wheezes for his own.

Ava’s silhouette shields him from the light, her hands are on his face, and she is calling him from far away, so scared. She wasn’t scared when she took that gun, she must really have a soft spot for him. Raylan tells her to call an ambulance but can’t hear the words he is saying.

He is fainting, and all he hears is rumbling from the bowels of the earth. All he sees is the primordial darkness of a mine, disturbed by the chaotically flinging lights from their headlamps as he and Boyd are running for their lives through a narrow tunnel. His heart is beating as fast as it was back then; Raylan feels out of breath; but they’ll make it because Boyd is holding his hand, and it seems that nobody will ever hold him tighter.

 

Raylan regains consciousness when a needle is already sitting in his hand, when he is lying on a stretcher in an ambulance – the circus of paramedics, police cars, officers, and marshals in the distance. Boyd’s stretcher is parked right beside his own, and the man turns his head to him, which is an idiotic, typically Boyd decision, because Raylan can feel how every single movement adds to his pain. The chest – his or Boyd’s, his _and_ Boyd’s – is burning, as if someone were pouring boiling water onto it. It means that the shock passes. Raylan idly wonders how much time do they have.

They shut the doors, leaving him and Boyd in private.

Boyd is looking at him with the eyes of the happiest dying man on earth, like Raylan has saved him, not shot him in cold blood. His face is half-covered by the oxygen mask, but Raylan discovers that he doesn’t have to see Boyd’s lips to know that they’re moving, forming the words of a simple phrase that will make Raylan’s life insanely difficult.

He hears or maybe imagines – he doesn’t know much about this stuff – Boyd’s voice in his head, softly saying:

_You have chosen me._

And Raylan knows that Boyd is right.

Yes. Yes, he has.


End file.
